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Pictured is a Delta IV rocket launch from Cape Canaveral on November 21st, 2010. The image is a 20 second exposure taken at dusk, shot from about 100 miles west of the launch site. The launch placed a classified payload in orbit for the United States Air Force.
Difficult but not impossible to catch against the dawn or dusk sky, spotting an extreme crescent moon can be a challenge. The slender crescent pictured was shot 30 minutes before sunrise when the Moon was less than 20 hours away from New. A true feat of visual athletics to catch, a good pair of binoculars or a well aimed wide field telescopic view can help with the hunt.
The Sun is our nearest star, and goes through an 11-year cycle of activity. This image was taken via a properly filtered telescope, and shows the Sun as it appeared during its last maximum peak in 2003. This was during solar cycle #23, a period during which the Sun hurled several large flares Earthward. The next solar cycle is due to peak around 2013-14.
Located in the belt of the constellation Orion, Messier 42, also known as the Orion Nebula is one of the finest deep sky objects in the northern hemisphere sky. Just visible as a faint smudge to the naked eye on a clear dark night, the Orion Nebula is a sure star party favorite, as it shows tendrils of gas contrasted with bright stars. M42 is a large stellar nursery, a star forming region about 1,000 light years distant.
Orbiting the planet in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) every 90 minutes, many people fail to realize that you can see the International Space Station (ISS) from most of the planet on a near-weekly basis. In fact, the ISS has been known to make up to four visible passes over the same location in one night. The image pictured is from the Fourth of July, 2011 and is a 20 second exposure of a bright ISS pass.
Next to the Sun, the two brightest objects in the sky are the Moon and the planet Venus. In fact, when Venus is favorably placed next to the Moon, it might just be possible to spot the two in the daytime. Another intriguing effect known as earthshine or ashen light is also seen in the image on the night side of the Moon; this is caused by sunlight reflected back off of the Earth towards our only satellite.
A mosaic of three images taken during the total lunar eclipse of December 21st, 2010. The eclipse occurred the same day as the winter solstice. The curve and size of the Earth’s shadow is apparent in the image.
Review: The Return of the Discontinued Man by Mark Hodder
A sci-fi classic!
Alt-history Steampunk has never been hotter. We recently finished up the fifth book in a brilliant science fiction series courtesy of Pyr Books. We’re talking about The Return of the Discontinued Man by Mark Hodder, out earlier this month. This is the fifth and (final?) book in the outstanding Burton and Swinburne series. We’ve chronicled our addiction to this series in the past, starting with The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack up through The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man, Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon and The Secret of El Yezdi.
The Return of the Discontinued Man is an appropriate coda for the award winning saga. What I particularly like about the series is the meticulous attention paid to history from our own timeline that’s thrown into the alternate Victorian reality depicted, with tales and incidents that often send us researching as we read the novels. All of the familiar Steampunk elements, such as Babbage devices, the Battersea Power Station and an army of time-travelling Spring-Heeled Jacks are back as well as a few new characters and twists. And hey, to our knowledge, it’s the first time that real life characters such as the “mad monk” Rasputin and H.G. Wells (ironically, of War of the Worlds and The Time Machine fame) have entered the steampunk pantheon.
And of course, the real life Richard Burton was a colorful character and world traveler in his own right, a fitting action hero.
The Return of the Discontinued Man takes our heroes hopping through time forward into the future after a series of attacks by the nefarious Spring-Heeled Jack. This leads our intrepid explorers on an expedition forward through alternate timelines as Burton suffers from strange visions. Some offer nightmare-ish visions of a British Empire that could’ve been, while others, such as their stopover in the psychedelic 1960s are downright hilarious. It’s a clash of Victorian sensibilities meets Haight-Ashbury hipsters!
And speaking of which, the Burton and Swinburne series does touch on something that much of the Steampunk genre fails to address: wouldn’t the advent of an early computer era also trickle down to change the social mores and constructs of the day? Perhaps, a social revolution might’ve occurred in the 1860s instead of the 1960s…
The final futuristic showdown is fitting for the series, though we won’t intercede with any spoilers as to the outcome. Suffice to say, we’d love to see the Burton and Swinburne saga get picked up as a TV or movie series for development. Seriously, it’s that good. And judging from what we’ve seen at science fiction conventions, there’s a HUGE interest in steampunk, which is a bit curious as the genre cries out for a true flagship Star Wars/Star Trek type series. Could The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack be it? Are you listening, SyFy?
Next up, we’ve finally caught up on our reading back log (for now) and have been reading and thoroughly enjoying Andy Weir’s novel The Martian…
More to come!